Go to Original
Health Care Horror Stories
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Friday 11 April 2008
Not long ago, a young Ohio woman named Trina Bachtel, who was having health
problems while pregnant, tried to get help at a local clinic.
Unfortunately, she had previously sought care at the same clinic while uninsured
and had a large unpaid balance. The clinic wouldn't see her again unless she
paid $100 per visit - which she didn't have.
Eventually, she sought care at a hospital 30 miles away. By then, however,
it was too late. Both she and the baby died.
You may think that this was an extreme case, but stories like this are common
in America.
Back in 2006, The Wall Street Journal told another such story: that of a young
woman named Monique White, who failed to get regular care for lupus because
she lacked insurance. Then, one night, "as skin lesions spread over her
body and her stomach swelled, she couldn't sleep."
The Journal's report goes on: "Mama, please help me! Please take me to
the E.R.," she howled, according to her mother, Gail Deal. "O.K.,
let's go," Mrs. Deal recalls saying. "No, I can't," the daughter
replied. "I don't have insurance."
She was rushed to the hospital the next day after suffering a seizure - and
the hospital spared no expense on her treatment. But it all came too late; she
was dead a few months later.
How can such things happen? "I mean, people have access to health care
in America," President Bush once declared. "After all, you just go
to an emergency room." Not quite.
First of all, visits to the emergency room are no substitute for regular care,
which can identify and treat health problems before they get acute. And more
than 40 percent of uninsured adults have no regular source of care.
Second, uninsured Americans often postpone medical care, even when they know
they need it, because of expense.
Finally, while it's true that hospitals will treat anyone who arrives in an
emergency room with an acute problem - and it's wonderful that they will - it's
also true that hospitals bill patients for emergency-room treatment. And fear
of those bills often causes uninsured Americans to hesitate before seeking medical
help, even in emergencies, as the Monique White story illustrates.
The end result is that the uninsured receive a lot less care than the insured.
And sometimes this lack of care kills them. According to a recent estimate by
the Urban Institute, the lack of health insurance leads to 27,000 preventable
deaths in America each year.
But are they really preventable? Yes. Stories like those of Trina Bachtel and
Monique White are common in America, but don't happen in any other rich country
- because every other advanced nation has some form of universal health insurance.
We should, too.
All of which makes the media circus of a few days ago truly shameful.
Some readers may already have recognized the story of Trina Bachtel. While
campaigning in Ohio, Hillary Clinton was told this story, and she took to repeating
it, without naming the victim, on the campaign trail. She used it as an illustration
of what's wrong with American health care and why we need universal coverage.
Then The Washington Post identified Ms. Bachtel, the hospital where she died
claimed that the story was false - and the news media went to town, accusing
Mrs. Clinton of making stuff up. Instead of being a story about health care,
it became a story about the candidate's supposed problems with the truth.
In fact, Mrs. Clinton was accurately repeating the story as it was told to
her - and it turns out that while some of the details were slightly off, the
essentials of her story were correct. After all the fuss, The Washington Post
eventually conceded that "Bachtel's medical tragedy began with circumstances
very close to the essence" of Mrs. Clinton's account.
And even more important, Mrs. Clinton was making a valid point about the state
of health care in this country.
In other words, this was a disgraceful episode. It was particularly sad to
see a number of Obama supporters (though not the Obama campaign itself) join
enthusiastically in the catcalls against Mrs. Clinton's good-faith effort to
put a human face on the cruelty and injustice of the American health care system.
Look, I know that many progressives have their hearts set on seeing Barack
Obama get the Democratic nomination. But politics is supposed to be about more
than cheering your team and jeering the other side. It's supposed to be about
changing the country for the better.
And if being a progressive means anything, it means believing that we need
universal health care, so that terrible stories like those of Monique White,
Trina Bachtel and the thousands of other Americans who die each year from lack
of insurance become a thing of the past.
-------
Jump to today's Truthout Features:
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
"Go to Original" links are provided as a convenience to our readers and allow for verification of authenticity. However, as originating pages are often updated by their originating host sites, the versions posted on TO may not match the versions our readers view when clicking the "Go to Original" links.
Print This Story
E-mail This Story